Dharmapala Wrathful Tibetan Buddhist deity Mask.Tibetan drag-gshed (“cruel, wrathful hangman”) .Sanskrit: “defender of the religious law”. In Tibetan Buddhism, any one of a group of eight divinities who, though benevolent, are represented as hideous and ferocious in order to instill terror in evil spirits.

In this small mask the simplicity of the lines and the plastic surrender, really minimal, is accompanied to an extraordinary expressive strength. Three small holes have been enough for the artist to realize the unbelievable expressive strength of the eyes and the mouth.From an iconographic view point this himalayan mask has not point of reference or of stylistic relative with other masks that are been published in precedence.

For its small dimensions the mask was perhaps brought attached to the neck or to the dresses, maybe during ritual dances. Small masks are used suspended to the dancers’ neck during ritual dances in the area of the Himachal Pradesh, the iconografia is very different however from this unique sample.

The complex simplicity of this small mask is underlined by the comparison with other so called primitive masks of the Himalayan area. (Inventory no.33)

In this last mask the expression is made by a symmetrical combination of the eyes, nose, mouth.

Although more elaborate, none of these three masks has the same expressive strength of the first, small but extraordinary one. (Inventory no.44)